MATTHEW ARNOLD'S "SIGNAL ELM" [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,--If I am not mistaken, there is an interesting example of the growth of local legend in connexion with "that single Elm-tree bright" which is the chief character of Thyrsis. Local lore, as my wife and I discovered on a recent holiday, identifies it with a certain lofty isolated tree on the ridge above Childsworth Farm. It catches the eye from long distances and most angles. Its photograph decorates the frontispiece a the World's Classics edition of Matthew Arnold's Poems. Its site is marked on the delightful sketch-map in the Medici Society's edition of The Scholar Gypsy and Thyrsis. But it is an oak ! Moreover, it could only "look on Ilsley Downs" with a Sam Weller glass to penetrate Foxcombe Ridge, and it must have been east of the poet when he saw the elm "against the West."
There is a lone sky-pointing elm at the entrance to a hamlet by Wootton Heath. It satisfied all the clues, and we decided that this was good enough at any rate to start another legend. But the matter still lacks proof ; we did not meet the Scholar Gypsy.--I am, Sir, &c.,
ERNEST C. MORTIMER.
St. Mary's Vicarage, , Frame, Somerset.
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